Editor’s note: This report compiles all relevant news, events and
materials on International and European Sports Law based on the daily coverage
provided on our twitter feed @Sportslaw_asser. You are
invited to complete this survey via the comments section below, feel free to
add links to important cases, documents and articles we might have
overlooked.

The Headlines

The Diarra
ruling of the Tribunal of Charleroi

On 19 January 2017, the Hainaut Commercial Tribunal –
Charleroi rendered its decision on the lawsuit filed by the football player
Lassana Diarra against FIFA and the Belgian FA (URBSFA) for damages caused by
not being able to exercise the status of a professional football player during
the entire 2014/2015 season. The lawsuit is linked to the decision, rendered by
the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber (DRC) on April 2015, to support Lokomotiv’s
decision to terminate the player’s contract and to order Diarra to pay Lokomotiv
the amount of EUR 10,500,000 for having breached his contract. According to the
plaintiff, Diarra’s opportunity to be recruited by Sporting Charleroi was
denied due to the club being potentially considered jointly liable for Diarra’s
compensation pursuant to Article 17 (2) RSTP. The Belgian court held strongly
that “when the contract is terminated by the club, the player must have the
possibility to sign a new contract with a new employer, without restrictions to
his free movement”. This case highlighted, once again, the need to read
the RSTP in the light of EU law. Moreover, the decision is laying further
ground for broader challenges to the RSTP on the basis of EU law (for a deeper
insight into the Diarra ruling, see the recent blog written by our senior researcher
Antoine Duval) More...

Since the release of the earth-shattering
ARD documentary two years ago, the
athletics world has been in a permanent turmoil. The International Athletics
Association Federation (IAAF) is faced with both a never-ending corruption
scandal (playing out in front of the French police authorities) and the related systematic doping of Russian
athletes. The situation escalated in different phases led by the revelations of
Russian insiders. First, in December 2014 with the ARD documentary, which demonstrated
how widespread (and organized) the recourse to doping was in Russian athletics.
It triggered the Pound investigation financed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which led to two
damaging reports (available here and here) for the Russian
anti-doping system and the IAAF itself. Thereafter, in November 2015, the IAAF
had no other choice but to provisionally suspend the Russian athletics
federation (ARAF then RusAF) and its members from IAAF competitions. Yet, this
was only the beginning as shortly after the former head of Moscow’s anti-doping
laboratory provided a
detailed sketch to the New York Times
of the operation of a general state-led doping scheme in Russia. The system was
designed to avert any positive doping tests for top-level Russian sportspeople and
was going way beyond athletics. These allegations were later largely confirmed
and reinforced by the McLaren investigation initiated by WADA in May 2016, and which published its first report in July 2016 shortly before the Rio Olympics. In June 2016, the IAAF anticipated
the conclusions of the report (it had received most of McLaren’s evidence beforehand) and decided to
maintain the ineligibility of Russian athletes for IAAF competitions, and for
the Rio Olympics. It did, however, foresee a narrow exception for Russian
athletes able to show that they were properly tested outside of Russia.
Nonetheless, the athletes using this exception were to compete under a neutral
flag at the Olympics. Unsurprisingly, Russian athletes led by pole superstar
(and now IOC member), Yelena Isinbayeva, and the Russian Olympic Committee
decided to challenge this decision in front of the Court of Arbitration for
Sport (CAS). Interestingly, while the decision was rendered on 21 July 2016, the
full text of the award was publically released only on 10 October 2016. In September,
I analysed the Rio
CAS Ad Hoc Decisions involving Russian athletes aiming to participate to the
Olympics. I will now turn to the IAAF
decision, which is of great importance to the future of the anti-doping system.
Indeed, it lays out the fundamental legal boundaries of the capacity of
international federations to impose sanctions on their members (and their
members) in order to support the world anti-doping fight. More...

Darya Klishina is now an Olympic
celebrity. She will enter the history books not because she won a gold medal or
beat a world record. Instead, her idiosyncrasy lies in her nationality: she was
the sole Russian athlete authorized to stand in the athletics competitions at
the Rio Olympics. And yet, a few days before the start of the long jumping contest
in which she was due to take part, the IAAF surprisingly decided to revoke her eligibility (‘And Then There Were None’). But Klishina
appealed the decision to the CAS ad hoc Division and, as all of you
well-informed sports lawyers will know, she was allowed to compete at the
Olympics and finished at a decent ninth place of the long jump finals.

Two important questions are raised
by this case:

Why did the IAAF
changed its mind and decide to retract Klishina’s authorization to participate?

On Monday 18 July 2016, Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren presented the Independent Person Report to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), regarding the alleged Russian
doping program surrounding the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. The report was expected
to seriously threaten the participation of Russian Athletes to the rapidly
approaching Rio Games, starting on 5
August. In the weekend prior to the report’s publishing, Reuters obtained a leaked
letter drafted by the CEO’s of the US and Canadian anti-doping agencies,
which according to the New York Times was backed by “antidoping officials from at least 10 nations— including
those in the United States, Germany, Spain, Japan, Switzerland and Canada — and
20 athlete groups”, urging the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to
ban all Russian athletes from the upcoming Olympics.

Editor’s note: This report compiles all relevant news,
events and materials on International and European Sports Law based on the
daily coverage provided on our twitter feed @Sportslaw_asser. You are
invited to complete this survey via the comments section below, feel free to
add links to important cases, documents and articles we might have
overlooked.

The headlines

What a month June
turned out to be. Waking up the morning after the 23rd, the results
of the UK referendum on EU membership were final. The words of Mark Twain: “Apparently
there is nothing that cannot happen today”, might provide the most apt
description of the mood felt at the time.[1]
The Leave campaign’s narrow victory has brought along tremendous economic,
political and legal uncertainties for both the UK and the (other) Member
States. To give but one example, with regard to the implications of Brexit on Europe’s
most profiting football league, we recommend an older blog
by Daniel Geey and Jonny Madill. More...

Editor’s note: Our first innovation for the
year 2016 will be a monthly report compiling relevant news, events and materials
on International and European Sports Law based on the daily coverage provided
on our twitter feed @Sportslaw_asser. You are invited to complete
this survey via the comments section below, feel free to add links to important
cases, documents and articles we might have overlooked.

The Headlines

The world of professional sport has been making
headlines for the wrong reasons in January. Football’s governing body FIFA is
in such a complete governance and corruption mess that one wonders whether a
new President (chosen on 26 February[1])
will solve anything. More recently, however, it is the turn of the athletics
governing body, IAAF, to undergo “the walk of shame”. On 14 January the WADA
Independent Commission released its second report into doping in international
athletics. More...

Upcoming Events

The ASSER International Sports Law Blog

This blog is a knowledge hub for all things related with International Sports Law. On this page, you will find the recent developments in the field: publications, events and cases. Moreover, we will provide outstanding (short) academic commentaries on the most pressing questions in International Sports Law.